Habits of Success

I absoutely LOVE Facebook memories (most of them anyway!) and the way they throw up random past happenings, thoughts or muses. A bit cringey when they date from 2007 when we all spoke in the 3rd person, but hey ho.

I’m the same with a paper diary, I’ve never kept one for the Dear Diary moments, but years later I just love to look back and see what I was doing on that day.

And keeping a diary is absolutely a must when you start a business, or at least start to change your life, as I have. Reading back over your past is a great way to recognise your progress – it just might not be visible to your weary eyes.

So yesterday Facebook threw this one up for me: “Eeek shizzle just got rizzle! Feel the fear and do it anyway I reckon!’

I read it and grinned, wondering what I was going on about. I read the comments.

Chris had asked ‘???’

And I had answered ‘Biggest job yet!’

So in our Monday morning meeting I showed the guys the screenshot and began to work out with Dean what that job might be. And do you know, we had no idea.

How ironic that something so big and scary that I Facebooked about it, just 365 days later has faded into the fog of time and memory loss.

But it has made me think back, to all those times I didn’t do things because I was afraid to, or I thought I would fail, or I was scared other people would laugh. And there we were, 12 months ago, feeling afraid, fearing we might fail and knowing full well our competitors would laugh if we did – all for it to disappear into the passing weeks and months.

We all owe it to ourselves to fight our inner fear and not allow it to stop us doing exactly what the fuck we want to.

Dammit! We all get one life here on this fabulous planet and the least we can do is live it to the full.

Ensuring we fill our minds with gratitude is one way to squeeze the worry out.

So with that in mind, today I’ve felt the fear but I’ve ignored it and I’ve shared a Facebook job vacancy post. So what if we don’t have huge amounts of money, we need someone to do all the data-inputting, letter writing and general admin and I have accepted it is starting to hold me back.

I am feeling extremely grateful for the perfect person who is about to come into our lives and take that job!

I am 200% confident that if we take on the right person to support T and I, both of us will fly higher than before, just as I have done every time we’ve taken on someone new. Committing to paying someone’s salary is scary, but I’m going to feel the fear and do it anyway, no matter how rizzle the shizzle!

I know it’s not a holiday weekend everywhere that this blog is read, but for those of you in the UK, I hope you’re having a GREAT bank holiday weekend – and who better to share it with than Denzel Washington!

It’s been a while since I shared a link to a motivational video but this one is definitely worth sharing.

I’m spending this rainy Sunday evening sitting at the computer, working on a design for a new brochure/leaflet on Canva and listening to YouTube videos in the background. I think that is officially multi-tasking!

This video by Denzel Washington is lovely to listen to. To be honest I could probably listen to Denzel Washington read out a list of car parts and it would sound amazing. But beyond his soothing voice is a serious message. Even though I consider myself pretty aware of my behaviours, thanks in part to some serious YouTube listening action, this video has reminded me of some crucial actions that I know I have let slip.

Trust me, this is a video that is definitely worth investing 24 minutes of your time with!

Many years ago someone I used to know had her ears syringed at the doctor’s, and came out raving about the procedure, telling anyone who would listen it was way better than any sex or drugs. (She never mentioned chocolate though.)

Obviously, I quickly made getting my ears syringed a life goal. How could I pass up the opportunity to experience sex and drugs on the NHS?

Luckily, a few years after my friend’s experience, I felt a bit bunged up and trotted along to the doctors hardly able to contain my excitement. It was rather a let down, to say the least.

The nurse looked in both ears and said:

“Oh no, they’re lovely and clean, I can see right through to the ear drum.

“You are due a smear test though.”

Imagine my horror. My afternoon went from a glorious experience rivalling the finest in drugs and sex to the non-glamourous, rather painful bad deal that comes when lying down with your feet in stirrups while a stranger sticks a large cotton wool bud up your privates.

And so that was it. My dreams of joining the ear syringing league fell at the first hurdle and seemed to be forever dashed.

Until recently.

As a teenager I went to boarding school. As a lifelong light sleeper, sharing a dorm with several other girls was very challenging and I developed a penchant for wearing ear plugs. Not just any earplugs, the wax variety called Muffles from Boots are the ones that get to go anywhere near my lugs. And they work wonders. The cone-shape goes in, the vacuum sound enters my head and usually I sleep like a baby.

Over the years, concerned about the amount of wax literally melting into my head, I’ve weaned myself off two earplugs and on to one, sleeping on the side that isn’t wearing the plug. And because Baldy has a tendency to sleep facing me, doing his pushy sleep breathing on my face, I usually sleep away from him with the ear plug mostly in one side.

Which means…

You’ve guessed it. Seriously, it could be 20 years since I first heard of the delight of ear syringing and possibly, just possibly I could be about to experience it.

This week I’ve also come down wth flu, which doesn’t help. But the last few weeks I’ve been waking up increasingly more deaf in that particular ear and for the past three days my hearing on that side has almost completely gone. It just sounds either like a very loud vacuum in there or like I’m standing next to an open window with a tropical storm going on outside. It’s almost painful, like there’s some serious pressure in there, but then that could be my flu-ridden head in general.

So, yesterday I made my first visit to our doctors since we moved here nearly three years ago. I knew immediately I was going to get on great with the GP, and she giggled away as I told her all about the life goal situation.

“Oh Izzy,” she said as she peered deep into my deaf lug. “I’m happy to tell you your dream is about to come true. There’s loads of wax in there!”

I punched the air in delight. But sadly my moment of beauty would have to wait.

I have to put drops of olive oil (doesn’t matter what sort – virgin, extra virgin, old tart, whatever) to soften the wax, every day for two weeks.

TWO WEEKS?!?

Ok. I’ve waited two decades. Two weeks isn’t going to kill me. Although the thought of being half-deaf for the next two weeks is a bit of a downer.

This is a frickin rollercoaster, folks!

I wrote here – only 11 days ago, for goodness sake – about my latest confidence crisis and how we seem to have overcome.

We ended 2017 (funny how old that already feels) with a tricky client and a job that was hard to price, a mix of various different jobs, much of it very bitty. As some of our jobs do, it has run over the estimated timescale, by quite some length.

Being so busy with our own house I put off doing a final count up of days (yes, ok, I was putting it off, because I knew it would be bad news). I finally did it yesterday and sure enough, it’s bad news.

So late last night I worked myself up into a meltdown which exploded over D today. We so needed that job to go well. Ok, correction. She was always going to be difficult, so the job was never going to make us much. But it needed to make us something. I stared at the final costings and knew there was no way I could charge her the final amount. We’ve simply taken far too long over it.

Last week D’s dad went into hospital so he was away for three days and the job booked for that week was pushed back.

The week before, I decided to book a few days for D and I to go visit my parents for my dad’s birthday – in France.

So we’ve gone from losing money on a job to having to postpone the next job and then booking ourselves on a trip to take us even further from actually getting any work. Talk about a catalogue of disasters. Talk about January being a write off.

Now, we absolutely 100% need a break, so I am looking forward to getting away.

But today I gave D an ultimatum. He needs to step up and get involved with the financial side, which he shies away from because it doesn’t interest him. But then he is detached from the reallity of the job and loses the urgency that he needs to be constantly driving the team forward.

Secondly, he needs to be planning the jobs in advance. As in, writing a list of the daily tasks needed and ensuring they get done. It’s something we started doing but again it doesn’t interest him so it stopped happening. I’ve written a few times about the importance of setting goals and here we have, in perfect clarity, a superb example of what happens when you don’t – there is nothing to measure progress against.

If he/we had planned this job he/we would have been able to identify it was running over. Also, the team would have had something to refer to and measure themselves against. It sounds so simple, and it is. So why haven’t we been doing it?

(I’ve got to bring in the renovation of this property here, it has been a massive distraction. But we could have taken 20 minutes to plan, so there’s no real excuse there.)

So in less than two weeks I’ve gone from thinking that we are going to make it, to sheer panic and the distinct possibility that the business may not survive beyond March.

Just two days ago I wrote about having to get a bit tougher when dealing with the team and with trades. Oh yes.

When we get back next week, I will be talking to the team. In no uncertain words. It’s 100%, 100 mph or nothing. Certain people will get an official warning to improve their performance or they will be out. Each job will get a written plan and that will be checked off at the end of every day to ensure we are on schedule and everyone is playing their part.

And I need to step up. Forget just doing all the office side, I need to be managing the team too. I need to be ensuring the management (D) can feel my boot hovering not too far from his backside, keeping him and the team on their toes and on track.

Or in March we both start looking for jobs. It really is that serious.

I am so glad this has happened now, when there is – just – time to turn it back round. But my gosh it’s scary.

It’s October! Suddenly the summer has come crashing to an end and the year is starting to feel old without anyone really realising.

On one hand I am horrified at how fast the year is speeding past, on the other, the start of a new month means the opportunity to start afresh, to set targets and goals.

I set goals back in August, and then failed to do pretty much all of them except for the ones that involved setting up our new business. But that was pretty all-encompassing and now, with each passing day, there is less to do than there was, so I feel I am starting to get some time back during the day.

So here are my goals for October 2017, to be renewed and re-set in November.

Weight reduction, fitness and exercise goals…

Business goals…

And these are minimum gals, I am kinda hoping to smash ’em!

I am already looking forward to checking in on my progress at the start of November!

I didn’t want to say anything too early, but I’ve just completed my first week back on the fantastic Exante Diet.

As part of my Project to develop a Successful Life, I am determined to make achieving a healthy weight a big part of it. And at the grand old age of 44, I decided to set my target at a reduction of 44lbs.

I lost 22 of those lbs a few months ago, documenting my progress on my YouTube channel. And then I lost focus and decided I would maintain for a while – yeah right – and got back into eating my own body weight on a regular basis, gaining 10 of those lbs back.

Plus, I’ve been so busy recently getting the business ready that I’ve almost forgotten what exercise is. Literally, hours of sitting at the computer, writing copy for the website, writing contracts, writing blog posts – or not! Even dog walks have been down to the bear minimum.

Last Sunday I woke up and just decided it was just time to get back on the Exante diet wagon. One of those unexpected but agreeable decisions that come from the feeling ‘enough is enough’.

This time, I decided I would record not just my weekly progress but daily – every mealtime in fact. That’s quite a commitment, as I discovered!

It’s also quite a lot of footage! Too much for one film! So I split the week into two – this is the first film covering Days 1-3:

The week ended on a real high at my weigh-in this morning with 6.5lbs gone – half a lb off half a stone!

Needless to say I feel so much better already – my stomach is flat(tish), I have more energy and my clothes are fitting more loosely.

Returning to the Exante products has literally been like meeting old friends again! Why I didn’t keep it going while ‘maintaining’ I will never know – I really could have replaced one meal every day with a product and that would have helped. I know now that is what I need to do to maintain, once I achieve my healthy goal weight of 146 lbs (10 stone 6lbs).

Who even IS a high achiever?

It’s all relative, of course. Everyone is a high achiever to someone, the same way everyone is a lesser achiever to someone else (yet another reason why we should never judge ourselves against others).

Simply put, we’re all on our own journey, each with its own challenges and battles. What is easy to one person is tough to the next, and so on.

This is a great video for keeping you focused on your own journey.

Yes, it’s going to be tough. Yes there will be days you don’t want to get out of bed. Yes there will be jealousy along the way. Yes there will be people wanting to see you fall. Yes you will feel like stopping. Yes the world will assume things about you.

I say ‘you’ – but really, of course, I mean ‘me’. I totally, totally have areas of weakness, places where my inner high achiever struggles to beat the lazy scared person.

For one thing, I always find it so hard to get out of bed. Every. Fricking. Morning. And that’s one area I need to work on, to get up, earlier, get started faster, get off my phone go for the day harder.

As this video reminds me, just get out of bed. Just do it. Ignore the rest inside my own head and the heads of others, and DO IT.

Stepping above the rest is not easy. We must surround ourselves with people who also have vision and can see the possibilities for us all. Surround ourselves with other high achievers, and prepare to fight!